DALMENY, NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA, November 19, 2015 /EINPresswire.com/ -- “ At the end of the Second World War, Australia remained very tightly, and in a most inhumane way, in the grip of its White Australia policy. This policy reflected the unrealistic and indefensible hope of a white nation remaining an outpost of far-away Europe, whilst occupying land stolen from its black owners ... ...

Australians in office (also) quietly forget that the Australian war effort had been supported or aided by coloured people from a variety of countries. Some of these, like the Papua New Guineans, had helped to save Australians from the Japanese. However, the policy makers in Australia were not touched by Shakespeare’s, 'For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother' ... ...

This was the country into which arrived a number of young, privately-financed Malayans. I was one of them. ... Most, if not all, of us had no idea of the kind of people we were to deal with, or their prejudices; few of our countrymen had previously chosen Australia for tertiary studies. In fact, racial prejudice was not something we had expected; nor had we experienced any in our country of birth, except from our colonial conquerors. ... ...

I am a third generation Malayan of Ceylonese ancestry, with a Hindu cultural background. I was sent to Australia in that first wave, carrying a British passport. I was not successful initially in my studies, much to the continued amazement of my people, and became the black sheep of the family. I settled down later, after a short and painful stint back home, where I was very much an outcast to my people.

I married an Anglo-Saxon Australian lass (in fact, she returned to Singapore with me for that painful period), and I subsequently completed my studies in Australia the hard way (I completed a four-year course within four years while earning an income by day and studying by night).

Accepted for citizenship while Australia was still officially white, I worked for the Australian government in such interesting fields as ethnic affairs (looking after the settlement needs of migrants); in the screening of foreign investment in Australia (to ensure that it was not against the national interest); the provision of assistance to secondary industry by government (ensuring the continued inability of Australian industry to be competitive globally); and the artistic (but very reasonable) creation of balance of payments statistics.

I also made a small contribution to the education system in the national capital (in part by being the foundation chairman of a school board); to career protection in the Australian public service (by leading, for seven years, a trade union sub-committee working on career protection ... ; and involved myself in a couple of other community concerns (including overseas aid and public speaking for school children). That is, I believe that I integrated into the Australian nation quite successfully and productively, but without losing my cultural identity or without losing sight of myself. ... ...

After the first few years in Australia, the lives of Asian students became far more tolerable. After all, it is quite disconcerting to be attacked in public simply because of one’s colour. The terrible prejudice which I and my fellow students had encountered diminished substantially over the years, and life became far more comfortable than it used to be. There is no evil without its advantages, is solace offered by some Indian sage. ... ...

In any event, today’s students from Malaysia and Singapore would not feel threatened (as we did at times) by the whims of immigration officials (who thought they were our guardians), security agents and their on-campus professorial spies, and others, particularly the landladies. ... And there is a Chinese proverb which says it well: only he that has traveled the road knows where the holes are deep.

It is against this background that I tell my story. It is neither an autobiography (at times it may read like one), nor an attempted history. It is a record of the early, traumatic cultural impacts of White Australia on an impressionable young Malayan in the immediate post-war period. It might, hopefully, lend support to the Malay adage that it is the fate of the coconut to float and for the stone to sink ...

This record ... contains, reluctantly, some personal details which may not be of direct relevance to the multicultural and integration aspects of my narrative. Such details do, however, touch upon the question of destiny – was I pushed or did I fall? Were the decisions by others reasonably well-based but used as vehicles by the stars to achieve their own objectives? Were the objectives karmic objectives, so that my mother, my sisters and I were merely paying a debt (or penalty)? Or was the whole experience one of learning? If so, had we chosen that lesson, as today’s New Agers claim, before being born? What a horrible thought!”

These are extracts from my book ‘Destiny Will Out,’ available as an ebook from Amazon at $US 2.99. Published in 1997. It represents a sliver of Australia’s post-war history, as I was advised by Prof. G. Melleuish, History & Politics, Wollongong University, Australia.

Raja RATNAM
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